Tundra Rose
by Raindog Bride
Summary: Dragon Campaign. Of Manor houses and drafty halls and old stories from a dead people. Of blue eyed prisoners and the quietest planned rebellion ever heard of. Zieg and Rose and the wolf eyed Moon.


**Tundra Rose**

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_There was a girl of the ice and seal people in the harsh lands to the north who was the most beautiful girl in her mother's house._

She set the tea things neatly on the tray- the delicate eggshell china cups, the stars and moon patterned plates, the tall and dangerously unbalanced tea pot that meant that she must take extra care walking down the drafty halls so as not to knock it off kilter and shatter it on the cold tile floor. The tray was heavy and plate silver, with a froth of scrollwork around the edges, making it easier to hold. She was well accustomed to carrying it.

_And one day the Moon looked down below and saw her as she was walking on the tundra, and so stunned was he at her beauty that he resolved to make her his bride. The next full moon, he descended from the sky on a silver rope, accompanied by all of his court. He bore a cloak made of frost and feathers, and a brace of deer made of moonlight and milk and their antlers of silver._

Her hair was short and sleek, as was the requirement for all of the slave class. It was as inky and pure as the darkness that gathered at the ceiling, refusing to be illuminated no matter how many coldly flickering torches there were. Her eyes were black as well, and her skin a luminous and unmarred white.

_And the Moon came to the house of the girl, and bowed low before her. He had a wolf's yellow eyes and a wolf's hoary ruff on his shoulders, and his hair was as silver as his skin. _

"_Come be my bride," he pleaded, commanding his gifts be brought forward and displayed in front of her. "For I have seen you out walking on the tundra, and I know that I must marry you."_

She walked slowly down the great halls, her hands clenched firmly about the edges of the tray. Her eyes were cast demurely downwards as her skirts swayed around her ankles and her slippers made little shushing sounds that seemed abnormally loud in the hall.

_The most beautiful girl in her mother's house stood silently before the radiant Moon and his divine host She was dressed in furs and trinkets of bone, and all around her stood her family, watchful and noiseless. She seemed to consider the Moon's offer, and the wind whipped around them and made her hair, black as the silence between the stars, stream out behind her._

She drew to a halt and balanced the tray as she knocked on the imposing iron door with its twin sets of Wingly armor on either side. Seeing the familiar iron and silver plates might have elicited a response from her, but she remained composed.

_Her voice was sweet and measured as she answered the Moon. "I will not marry you," she said, "for I am promised to another, and he is as brave as you are bright, and I will not take another husband."_

A baritone "Enter," from inside gave her leave to carefully open the door, balancing the tea tray on her hip. She pushed her way through, and walked slowly towards the window.

_The Moon was then very wroth, and he snarled at her with a wolf's long teeth. He toppled her mother's house with a swipe of his hand, and snatched her up with another. And then he bore her away to his country, and placed her in a castle guarded by an enormous silver-scaled dragon of uncommon ferocity. But her lover heard her shrieks of fury from inside the castle, and noted well how the Moon went black with anger for an entire night, and resolved to rescue her._

He sat there by the window with his scrolls and reports. He was a large man, well muscled and tall, and if he were human he would have been well-suited with a beard, but Winglies have no facial hair. He didn't look up as she set the tea tray down on the table beside him with scarcely a rattle. She stood up with her hands folded in front of her and her head bowed, waiting for him to dismiss her. He flapped a hand, and bent lower over his paperwork, so she made a deep curtsey and left as quickly and as quietly as possible.

Her eyes glittered as she made her way back to the kitchens.

_Her lover donned his bright sword and his cloak made of fox skins, and made his way out on the Tundra to search for his beloved._

The news filtered down from the masters to the servants, and reverberated all throughout the manor. She heard it while she was clearing the breakfast things from the master's bedside, as the chamber slaves gossip to each other.

A monster fell from the sky last night, a big flaming monster that destroyed a barracks when it hit the ground, one said.

A slave gasped, and her eyes went wide. Another scoffed. Can't be. Heard it was a Resistance fighter who brought explosives. Got him chained up down below. They're gonna sell him to the show fighters at Kadessa.

She remembered the explosion and the fire in the night, and she remembered the extra guard placed on the cellar that served as a temporary dungeon. There was a gap in their number, and they looked hard and nervous.

He killed a lot of them, the maids said. Took 'em all out, like a wild man.

Later, the master called all of the slaves to the Great Hall, and made an announcement. Anyone found discussing the Resistance and the army gathering in the North would be taken outside, chained in the snow for a day, and whipped. Anyone caught speaking to prisoner would get two.

It wasn't an idle threat. He'd done it before. Those who lived, lived. But it was easy to die from it.

They're afraid, a slave whispered to her. They're afraid we're gonna rise up.

The words left a stain like an oil slick on her mind.

_He drove his dogs to the silver rope that led to the Moon's country, and there he left them. Taking the rope in his hands, he began to climb, not minding the howl of the wind, nor the burning taunts of the stars as they watched him ascend._

She saw the manor guards laugh and gather outside of the cellar, their eyes scornful of whatever was inside. They didn't care about any wild man now- what could he do, chained up as he was?

A barrel with a board on it served as a table. They ate and played cards there, killing time until the transfer was made and he would be taken off of their hands. She brought them wine, as was her duty, and did not fight back as they pinched and poked and grabbed and twisted, leaving hundreds of little imperfections. She was cool and calm as the ice above the running river. When they are drunk, she told herself. When they are unwary.

She would see for herself.

They gave her a plate of rotten food, and told her to give it to the Hairface in the back. She took it and did as she was bidden.

_He reached the top, his fine clothes shredded by the wind and the knife-edged frost. He was frozen down to his very bones, but still, he prayed to Mother Sun, and she sent him a gift- a piece of herself in a stone that would warm him and light his way._

He sagged in his chains, and he seemed either asleep or dead, but then his head snapped up and he glared at her with a blue-hot intensity that said that he would do many an unimaginable thing were he free.

The strength in it faded as he saw her for what she was. A thin human, young at that, and weaponless.

"Th' hell are you?" he muttered. He was thin, very thin, all sticks and stark muscle, and his hair was a dusty, dirty blonde. His face was a long, mottled bruise.

She touched the chains softly. They were cold enough to burn.

_After walking for many a league through the weird and winding landscape where the Sun did not tread, he found the castle where his love was kept. The silver-scaled dragon uncoiled itself like a wind of steel ropes, and faced him with one burnished eye. "Come no closer, little man," it hissed. "or I will freeze the meat from your body and crack the marrow from your bones."_

"_I do not believe you," said the girl's lover calmly._

"_There is nothing for you here," growled the dragon._

_It lunged for him there, a silverwebbed whip of pure motion, but the lover lifted the token from Mother Sun and the dragon screamed as its flesh melted away, for it was made of ice and hate and loathsome things that skulk in the twilight, and could not stand the touch of sunlight._

Days passed, until one night when she stole in softly after the guards had once again become foolish. All was quiet in the manor

He woke only when the steady _rasp rasp rasp_ against the chains began. "What are you doing?" he asked muzzily.

He needed water, badly. His lips were ragged like old flaky paper, and his eyes were sunken, the bright, brilliant blue in them dulled. They had not allowed him much in the way of food or water in all the days that they had kept him, and she hadn't had time to bring him any more.

Only a small, blunted file from the kitchens, normally used to sharpen knives.

But it would be enough.

She didn't entirely know why she was doing this. All he did was sleep and stare and hate and sleep some more.

"How did you come here?" she asked. It was the first thing that she had said to him. The Manor was north, far north. Not as far as the lands of her mothers, but too far for anyone to casually travel to.

His mouth cracked open in a grin so dry that it bled. "Fell from the sky," he rasped. There was a laugh somewhere in there. A laugh that found something so incredibly funny that it couldn't even bring itself to be heard.

Liar, she wanted to call him. Who are you, little angry man?

His head jerked up again, and his gaze blazed right through her. "Hurry," he commanded.

The file had made a dent as wide as her fingernail already. She could see the scars on his wrist.

_He reached the Castle of the Moon and scaled its walls easily. Inside he found his beloved, wearing a silver dress, her hair bound up with silver pins and she had paint on her face that made her look like the dead white belly of a fish. She warned him quickly that the Moon was out crossing the sky in a bone white chariot, and he would be back once the Mother Sun had fallen._

"_No matter," he replied. "For you and I shall lay a trap for him."_

_And when the Moon came home in his bone white chariot pulled by his sable reindeer, the most beautiful girl in her mother's house waited in front of him and smiled, and while the Moon was distracted by her loveliness, her lover seized him from behind._

She ascended the stairs before him, and so the Wingly guard's gaze focused on her first. She smiled at him, wide and dazzling and pure, and the guard was taken aback for a moment. But then she stepped aside, and a crazy man with hot blue eyes fell on the room of Winglies like a wolf amongst the flock.

With a sword in his hand, he was a demon, and he didn't stop until every last one was laid out on the floor, dead or dying.

She watched, the ghost of a cool, content smile suggested on her lips. The satisfaction in watching the massacre filled a void within her that had been gnawing at her heart ever since her people had been taken away from the wind and the tundra and the stories of their mothers.

Despite his care, the alarm was raised. The manor exploded into life, and she could hear them coming.

_The moon writhed and choked in the grip of the lover as the most beautiful girl in her mother's house tore out the pins in her hair and let it fall freely. She ripped her dress and found her furs and trinkets of bone and donned those instead. She wiped her face with one grimy sleeve, and her true beauty shone through as hotly as her fury._

_His wolf's teeth snapped at the empty air, and his eyes rolled and turned a mutinous orange. "Unhand me!" he shouted._

"_Not until you release me," she purred, a needle-sharp dagger slivering around his throat. "Otherwise I shall spill your blood all over the floors of your house."_

His eyes bulged, but he could do nothing.

It was a slaughter.

Her master seemed so much smaller, splayed out on the floor, broken and silent. His guts were peeking out through his fingers where he had tried to keep them in. It hadn't worked.

All around were equally dead Winglies.

More were coming.

Her companion stopped, and rifled through the pockets of the lump of dead meat that used to be the captain of the guard. When he stood up, there was a stone in his hand as red as blood and as bright as the winter sun. An eerie, triumphant smile was on his face, and she could see how young he really was. "There you are," he murmured, and the red stone _glowed_ in response.

His gaze and that smile flicked up to her and hit her like a wall of flame. She was immolated under the weight of it.

"You can't stay here," he said.

She shook her head.

The smile kicked up a notch, and it contained all sorts of wicked things. "Come with me," he said.

The stone flared, and he _changed_.

_And the most beautiful girl in her mother's house took the cloak of frost and feathers and wore it on her shoulders. She took the two reindeer made of moonlight and milk and their antlers of silver and she hitched them to the bone white chariot of the Moon._

_Smiling like a crack in the ice, she turned to the Moon and said, "You see? I could never marry you."_

_And then she and her lover departed from the lands of the Moon and returned to the lands below._

The terror of flying diminished with the thrill of it, and the aura of burning that wreathed around him kept her warm in the terrible wind. His arms wrapped around her and held her up as they streaked across the sky like a comet, a great trail of light and fire streaming out behind them. Under the armor and wings, he looked a different man altogether, someone noble and calm.

Not the half-starved crazy man who decimated an entire household and grinned for more.

"Fort Magrad is just a few miles ahead to the north," he shouted into the wind. "You'll fit right in."

"I was born in the North," she said softly, and her eyes glowed.

"What?" he shouted back, and his wings strained for more speed, more air, more ground to cover, and his breath was hot in her ear.

"Rose!" she yelled, "My name is Rose!" and the note crawled up to a shriek as the wind hurled them to the ground and his wings whined and squeaked as they struggled for altitude.

She wondered if she would fall in love with him and they would fly the world as they were doing now, freeing all the people. And then she decided not to, because she'd had enough of not being free.

But she had a name, and it was given to her by a long-dead mother of the land of the winter darkness, and she would speak it to whomsoever she wished.

"_Zieg,_" he whispered, and the name crawled into her ear and smoldered its way down into her belly as he laughed a wonderful laugh and kissed the warm skin beneath her hair.

The night burned on.

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Author's Note: Ha! My first Dragon Campaign fic. Also, I love Zieg. Kanzas can't be the only crazy one. And I've always had this idea that the only reason that Zieg and Rose hooked up was because of the awesomeness of post-battle sex. If both of them had made it out of Kadessa- would their marriage still have worked out? Enough out of me. Review? Please? If you do, then I can do better next time.


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